


Thirteen Reasons Not

by Galaxer



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV), Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-10-19 22:58:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10649820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galaxer/pseuds/Galaxer
Summary: The night Clay hears his tape, he jumps off of that cliff. And he wakes up in his bed, months earlier, with the faint knowledge that he can save Hannah... but only if he can stop each of the thirteen reasons from happening. But there's one problem: he's only listened to eleven of them. How much can the butterfly effect change?Author's note: In no way is this meant to undermine the extremely important message of the show or novel. Hannah's suicide is not something to be ignored. This is a work of fanfiction meant only to serve as a work of fanfiction.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> It is important to note that suicide, particularly in teenagers, is a very serious topic and problem within our society. Though this work depicts a character's suicide, it is not intended to undermine the severity of the issue.

Clay stands at the edge of what could be the end of his world and thinks _Is this what she felt like? Alone? Like there was nothing she, or anyone could do to fix it?_

“Clay, I think you should step back from that edge.”

Below him, the city lights are glowing. Cars drive on mostly empty streets. It’s far too late to be out tonight, but he doesn’t care. He needed to get away. But here is not away. Those were her streets, and this was his fault. If he looks past the guilt all he can see is the imprint of a red Sharpie drawing on the places she used to be. Thinking hard enough, he is able to trace a path throughout the town and recreate the mess they all caused. He knows this is not entirely his fault. But even Tony said it: he _killed_ Hannah Baker. Clay Jensen killed Hannah Baker. And there is no way to bring her back. Unless--

Before he can stop it, his thoughts have turned to words.

“I should have stayed with Hannah. I should have told her -- I should have said…”

“What, you think you could have said anything that could have changed any of this?”

Tony has now taken one step closer. The moments are passing like a play-by-play. A flip book. It’s as if it’s all been written down already, and Clay just _knows_ that this is how it’s supposed to be. Something is telling him that if he takes that step forward, off the cliff face, he can change all of this. It’s pure idiocy, pure adrenaline, and he’s sure his mind is running off of some serious bullshit because he’s been here before, but metaphorically, and it ended in a twice-a-day prescription of Duloxetine. But this time is different. He doesn’t know how, but he knows it will fix everything.

He turns to face Tony. There’s a pleading look in his eyes that strikes fear into Clay’s heart. _Don’t do it, Clay. Don’t jump._ It almost changes his mind. Just like he almost changed hers.

“If I jump, I can change it. I can fix it.”

“That’s not the way the world works, Clay. Please -- just step back, man.”

He reaches his hand out before him, waiting for Clay to grab it. Soon it will be for a ghost. Tony’s doing everything right to save a jumper, but sometimes things have to be a certain way. This is unfortunately one of those times.

“No, Tony. I-I’m sorry.”

Clay’s facing the world again. Behind him, he hears Tony scuffle forward. It’s now or never. And he just _knows._

One step forward and the world is rushing around him.

Somewhere in this vast falling abyss, that one slow song, the most amazing song begins to play, and it drowns out Tony’s calling.

_‘I am not the only traveler…’_

Streaks of blue, yellow, and orange sparkle around him like stars. His jacket is fluttering behind him like a pair of fucked up wings. Below he can see rocks and trees: the inevitable. Hot butterflies bubble through his chest, flying through his ribs and congregating in his lungs. Nearby, he can feel her falling with him. It is then that his chest begins to burn and there is something -- no, someone -- dead banging against the coffin in his heart that wasn’t nailed shut tightly enough, resurrecting themselves. He closes his eyes, and succumbs to _knowing_. There will be no crash landing. Instead--

* * *

Clay wakes up in his bed early that morning. Gray sheets envelop him, his face buried in his pillow.

“Shit.”

That was the worst one yet. It lingers with him as he drags his exhausted self into the bathroom, so vivid it could have actually happened. Removing his clothes is exfoliating as he prepares to step into the shower. Turning the knobs, he gives it a moment to heat up and turns to examine himself in the mirror; his chest is glistening with sweat, and he looks as if he hasn’t slept for at least a week. It’s haggard, almost, and as he runs a hand through his damp hair, his eyes move upwards.

“What the fuck…”

Delicately, one finger rubs the left side of his forehead.

The _clear_ left side.

There isn’t a single marking on his forehead at all.

“I’ve gone absolutely crazy.”

He steps into the shower, but not without one look back into the mirror. Still, nothing has changed.

* * *

Back in his room, the daily ritual of staring into the closet has begun. None of the shirts look new, or stand out, so he just pulls something off of a hanger and onto his chest with no regard as to how it actually looks because when you get down to it, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the little things, sure, but what you wear to high school doesn’t affect your future. For a second, it occurs to Clay that it might (considering Hannah) but he brushes it off and heads to his desk to begin the next tape.

Frantically, he begins searching everywhere. Under his desk where they should be, under his bed where they might be, in the bottom of his closet where they won’t be. But the tapes -- Hannah’s tapes -- are gone. Looking a little more, so is the Walkman. And when he really gets down to it, Clay realizes that his mother hasn’t called him for breakfast either. The house is completely silent.

Everything is fast, and he’s going to be late for school (though, truthfully, he doesn’t care about that, he’s just allowed some kind of stable concern to fill the confusion in his mind because _none of this makes any sense at all_ ) so he abandons the thought of the tapes with the notion that perhaps he’s in need of a break anyways, and mounts his bike. The ride to school allows his brain to clear a little. But it’s not long until it’s screwed up again.

* * *

_Honestly, did you really think that you could ignore it?_

He’s staring again, down the hall to her locker, and he’s gone to that place inside himself where simultaneously all and none of his thoughts exist. It comes as no surprise when she appears there, opening it, taking her books out again, repeating the routine he usually saw. The daydreams -- manifestations, really -- happen when he stares. Hannah’s hair is long again, the way he mostly remembers her. She turns to look at him. He waits for the ominous dialogue or the opening notes of a (a.k.a. their) song. But instead she smiles and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. Clay smiles back. He just can’t help it, no matter if she’s real or not.

But now she’s shut her locker and is walking towards him.

“Hey, Helmet!”

“Uh, hey,” his answer comes awkwardly, with a brief shake of the head.

“I take it you spent the whole night finishing up the essay for Mrs. Bradley. Y’know, considering the sad eye bags,” she smiles again and draws imaginary air-circles before her eyes with a finger. “Doesn’t sound like you.”

“Oh, you know me, it’s the uh-- it’s the little rebellions.”

Somewhere within him, he finds the power to muster another smile back. She seems too real this time. It’s getting worse… much worse. It’s surpassed the point of melancholy and has grown into being just sad. This exchange has never happened before; his mind has resorted to making up conversations with a dead girl.

_So that’s new._

Overhead, saving grace. The bell rings and she adjusts her backpack onto one shoulder, walking a little ahead of him as he stares into this unsound reverie.

“C’mon, you’ll be late! Which, I might add, is also _very_ unlike you,” she calls, walking backwards towards their first class.

He decides it’s the smile that’s killing him. It’s plastered on her face again, cheerful, teasing, always there for every slip into that barrier between reality and insanity. Then Hannah turns forward, entering the wave of students, and is quickly swallowed up in the flood to first period. Clay resolves to seeing her the next time his mind falters.

Apparently, he’s teetering on the brink of losing his mind because Hannah Baker is sitting there in Mrs. Bradley’s class when he arrives.

He’s staring again, watching her as she glances up at Justin every few moments.

“Ok! Everyone, turn in your essays,” Mrs. Bradley walks around, collecting each table’s paper piles. The woman really gets down to business when she means it.

Clay flounders. What essay? He doesn’t remember finishing an essay. He doesn’t even remember being _assigned_ an essay anytime recently. Hannah mentioned it, but she was just some sick figment of his sorrows, she didn’t pertain to the present anymore except for the revelations of her suicide tapes.

“This is just…”

“Clay… _Clay?_ ”

Mrs. Bradley is standing behind him. Behind the patience of waiting for the table’s papers (and his) there is a layer of concern.

“Can I uh, --” _leave?_ “go to the restroom?”

“Sure, Clay.”

Clay hands over the papers and Mrs. Bradley doesn’t even ask if he’s alright.

But Hannah does.

As he’s grasping for all of his things to get the hell out of there, Hannah silently mouths ‘ _Are you alright?’_ Nodding like a mad man, he mouths back ‘ _Yeah’_ but he knows she isn’t buying it because her eyebrows are still furrowed together, though she nods tentatively.

It’s _bright_ out in the hallway. The light might as well be radiation waves cooking into his skull; Clay hasn’t had a migraine this bad since he first started his medication. For God’s sake, it’s flopping his stomach inside-out. The bathroom door can’t open fast enough. He charges into the first stall he sees and contemplates vomiting. Something is different. It’s not just the lack of the cut on his forehead (as this runs through his mind he looks through the crack in the stall door to view himself to make sure that situation hasn’t changed) or the fact that his visions of Hannah have become more than fleeting today (but didn’t Justin see her too? he could have sworn he saw him look back once. and Mrs. Bradley collected papers from her) but the walls themselves have transformed.

The last time he looked, the walls were painted fresh. Before that, there were truly poetic quotes such as _Hannah Baker: Best Ass, Worst Attitude_ and _Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Noelle Williams_. Now, the walls are covered with too much graffiti to be done over the span of a few days, but on the top corner of the stall door is still that overly thought out quip about Noelle Williams and nothing about Hannah.

_There’s just no escape, is there? There is a fifth dimension, and it lies between the pit of Clay Jensen’s sanity and the summit of his imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone._

Graffiti begins to run through Clay’s thoughts and the walls become too tight and the whole bathroom seems so hot and the small windows too bright and by the time he’s leaning on one of the sinks he’s questioning more than just his sanity. Eyes closed against the migraine, taking a deep breath, it sets in. An incomplete _knowing_.

_If I jump I can change it … Just step back, man … Clay! … thirteen reasons … thirteen tapes … butterfly effect … Your name does not belong on this list …_

_Somewhere, he is falling through the cool California air and beside him is Hannah, who is frozen in time, without the look of one who's heading for the ground._

_“Why didn’t you tell me when I was alive?”_

_“Hannah, I--”_

_“The tapes, Clay, just listen to the tapes …”_

_The ground is coming at him fast, much too fast, and it’s much too late to go back and people just can’t fly and he closes his eyes and he can feel his bedsheets and his soft mattress and he opens his eyes and_

  
he is standing with his hands clutching the cold linoleum of a cheap school sink and some part of him just knows that today is the beginning of something that he has to do.


	2. Chapter 2

Breathe in. Breathe out.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth. 

The instructions resurface from a memory a few years old. His mother kneels before him, looking a much shorter Clay in the eyes. Lainie’s a lawyer, not a nurse, but she’s seen enough clients panic before a trial to understand what’s going on. She walks him through it, breath by breath, and though it’s been folded and tucked into a far corner of his mind, Clay still hasn’t forgotten the motions. It comes back to him like a knock-off brand of déjà vu.

Not that his two stabilizing breaths really do much, considering that the bathroom smells like the disgustingly pink, school-issued cleaning supplies made by people with no regards to those of their kind with noses. Honestly, it  _ adds _ to the nausea. But it all becomes easy to swallow down once he  _ (forces himself to do so) _ takes a moment and returns to the hallway. The walk back to class helps him regain a small sense of himself, dulling the spinning that had started in the back of his head.

Mrs. Bradley asks no questions when he returns to Communications. Taking his seat, Clay resolves to pushing through today. Ironically, it feels like fighting against the tide if he doesn’t. 

So Mrs. Bradley’s class drones along for another forty minutes and at the end of it all Clay manages to fish an essay out of his backpack that seems to go along with what they’re learning about and goes to her desk. She squints her eyes almost comically at him when he sticks it out in front of her, but they both know he’s a good student so he’s off the hook.

_ She just expected better of me, _ he tells himself.

* * *

 

Thank God that Liberty High wasn’t struck with a catastrophe that day because if Clay had to give an eyewitness report he wouldn’t have been able to remember a damn thing. For once in his life, he’s taking a day off. Of course, it’s not by choice. Anybody who knows Clay well enough could tell you that it never would have been by choice. It’s as if the conscious part of his brain retreated to a blank headspace where nothing entered and nothing exited. Just his brain, alone with his thoughts, buzzing around at a million miles an hour and loud enough to deafen nearly everything around him.

He’s walking, dazed, down the sidewalk to the bike rack when he hears the mirage herself speak behind him. He’s done his best not to take too much notice of her today, but apparently Hannah Baker is impossible to keep buried for very long.

“Hey! Helmet!”

Clay turns, almost reluctantly (yet once again unable to stop himself), and she’s jogging right up to him.

“Can you email me your French notes? I can’t understand a thing that Madam Steinberg says, it’s like she’s speaking German.”

There’s something tentative about the way she’s speaking. So delicate, her words fall into the air and float to his ear, like snowflakes, then rest there, and for the first time today he mostly registers something. One look down and Clay sees (and feels!) her arm locked with his. It has been this whole time.

“Sure,” Clay’s not even entirely aware of the words leaving his lips.

_ Some part of her has to know… _

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees it. Sees  _ him _ . And Clay thinks,  _ oh fuck. _

Justin’s leaning out of the Audi as it pulls up beside them. His face is plastered with a smile that could please the Devil. Perhaps it has.

“Ride home?”

Clay’s frozen.

“Thanks, but no. My chariot awaits,” Hannah looks at him, her eyes searching through his own as if she had something she wanted to say and was battling with her tongue to say it or not. Whatever it is, she doesn’t. “Bye Clay! Bye Justin!”

And she’s gone, adjusting her bag as she half-walks half-jogs to the bus.

This is not knock-off brand déjà vu. It’s China White, shooting straight through him.

“You guys go,” Justin’s getting out of the car now.

“Whoah! No way! Bus?” Zach calls back.

Clay could go deaf and blind and still know everything that will happen in the next few moments. 

Tony arrives. The true chariot. He’s right behind Zach, who’s putting his car into drive.

“Clay! You need a ride?”

His brain feels full of cotton balls.

“Yeah, we just have to get my bike.”

“No problem.”

Clay gets in and can do nothing but stare as the Mustang rolls that short way forward. He doesn’t immediately move when they reach the rack, and Tony offers to put it in the trunk himself. Clay allows him to gladly.

_ That was it. That was my moment to stop it, and I couldn’t. I didn’t _ .

He flinches at the thump of Tony shutting the trunk, but it does nothing to stray his mind off course.

_ All I had to do was say one word. I could have just told Hannah I’d walk with her. I know what happens when he follows her onto the bus, and what starts when they go to the park. I could have  _ (saved her)  _ stopped it all from happening. _

Tony slides into the front seat and breaks Clay from his reverie.

“Hey, you alright?”

“Yeah, just a pretty long day. French test.”

To lie now is just as easy as when he had to cover for the tapes. The only difference is that he has to put on a little more of a show this time around, hiding emotions instead of a dead girl’s confessional.

“It’s not exactly my day either, man.”

The engine roars as the car starts to move. Outside, Hannah hops off of the bus, carefree and lively. Her hair swishes back and she smiles. Clay turns away; there’s a knot twisting in his chest emblazoned with the letter G.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, more to alleviate himself than out of actual concern.

“What’s wrong with me? That’s kind of a hard-hitting question, don’t you think?” Tony’s smiling. Clay’s transgression is forgiven. “Just some personal stuff. Nothing I can’t handle. How was your French test?”

“Have you ever felt like you’ve just messed something up so bad and there’s nothing you can do about it?”

Laughing, Tony shakes his head.

“If I’m being honest? No,” he looks over to meet his eyes with Clay’s. “My mom always said that there’s room for a second chance. I’ve never had a reason not to believe her.”

“Well what if you waste your second chance?”

Tony’s face shades over with a look Clay’s seen before.  _ Don’t do it, Clay. Don’t jump. _

“Was your test really that bad, Clay?” 

There's something in the way that Tony asks the question that makes Clay realize he might be seeing through his facade. Nonetheless, he continues with it.

“No, don’t worry about it. It’s really not that big of a deal.”

A pregnant pause settles down between them, full with concern. Tony hesitates, then nods.

“I think you need some good music,” Tony uses his right hand to search through the tapes in the center console and slides one into the radio slot.

* * *

 

The mixtape is about halfway through when the Mustang pulls up to Clay’s house. Neither one of them spoke for the rest of the ride there, but Tony breaks the silence as Clay is reaching for the passenger door’s handle.

“You need help with the bike?” he nods in the general direction of his trunk, and something in the way he looks back at Clay tells him that there might be more meaning to the question.

“No, I can get it. Thanks.”

Tony’s gaze follows him as he walks to the back of the Mustang and pulls his bike out of the trunk. Clay gives him a short wave and half a smile as he walks it up to his house, and though Tony juts his head in response, his car still lingers. It doesn’t move until Clay leans his bike against the house and begins heading for the front door.

Inside is the way it was before: quiet. The presumption that his mother isn’t home yet comes easy and it’s even easier to know that his father is likely tucked away into his back office reading a paper he assigned last week.

Around him, the world has this feeling of being just off-kilter enough to set reality out of place. It is still, yet careening thousands of miles through space, and in this small pocket of it all Clay can feel his footsteps falling through the thick air as he approaches the stairs. It feels dream-like, almost, like when you’re in a nightmare and just can’t run fast enough from the ugly thing behind you. Except it is becoming increasingly more evident to Clay that this is all real.  It can’t be, but it is.  His father doesn’t hear him, Hannah Baker is alive, history is repeating itself, and he didn’t do a damn thing to stop any of it.

The bedroom door eases open. Clay shuts it behind him in a straight path to his bed. For a moment, the soft pillow and the blank ceiling above bring him peace. If he just rolled over to his side, closed his eyes…everything could go back to the way it was.

_(the way it's supposed to be?)_   


Black and white dots buzz around his skull. It’s like the TV when the cable cuts out. Deep behind it is a steady droning, drilling through brain. The hole it leaves behind is vacant, but like any good old abandoned motel the squatters soon come and Clay is on his feet, responding to the settling anxiety.

First, his desk. He’s careful with moving the laptop, but pens and pencils clatter to the floor. Old souvenir knick-knacks tumble in response to sudden jerks as the two small drawers below them are ripped open, being searched desperately for any kind of sign that Clay misplaced the tapes.

But is misplacement any better?

The closet now. Tearing through old shoeboxes, tossing a few pairs of actual shoes onto the floor behind him.

What if he does find the tapes? What does that make him? How far gone would he be? There is a void and it would be Clay Jensen’s brain.

There’s a slight reassurance in the fact that Tony acknowledged her, but not enough. Even though Clay could swear that Justin saw her too, he can’t know for sure. This is just too fucked up.

At this point he’s now digging through the tiny shelf above his clothes rack. Plastic clacks against plastic as he stands on his toes to swish aside the keepsake boxes his mother packed with old schoolwork and elementary achievements so that he can scour every inch of the small space.

“God _ damn  _ it!”

Absently, he kicks one of the cardboard boxes at his feet. It slides against the hardwood before finally thumping on his dresser. The ground invites him to sit, but there’s more to do. He knows he checked earlier, but childish hope still lingers that maybe -- just  _ maybe  _ \-- Hannah’s box ended up under his bed. Clay clears away some of the mess he created and gets down to peer into the abyss below. He lifts the edge of his blanket with one hand and uses the other to shine his phone light into the darkness; he can see outlines of crumpled socks, old popcorn, and balls of lint but nothing large enough to be the box of tapes.

Jaw tightening, Clay turns off the light and sits with his back against the side of his bed. Where else could they be? This isn’t a movie, this is real life, the tapes have to be somewhere around here --

The thought strikes through him with startling electricity.

What if his parents found them?

Surely, his dad would have said something when he came home…unless they planned to talk about it together. Maybe that’s why his father was so silent.

Part of Clay wants to scream and part of him wants to continue tearing his room apart. The scariest aspect is that he isn’t sure if he wants to keep ripping through everything to actually find the tapes or to satisfy his budding frustration. Kicking the shoebox just wasn’t enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I'm sorry for how late this chapter ended up getting posted. I got backed up with a lot of school stuff, AP tests, finals. Now that summer's on its way, things should pick back up. I'm sorry if this chapter seems like a little bit of a filler, I'm working on getting back into the groove of things. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and feel free to leave me a comment down below. See you soon!


End file.
